10 Personal Web3 and Crypto Commitments

At the time of writing this, I am in my second month of leading growth at Mirror and working full time in web3.

It has been a deeply fun mind blast. The broader crypto space is a complete whirlwind that I am working hard to understand and integrate into: there is constant noise, money, new things, trends, personalities, tools, and an unreasonably unrealistic pressure to know EVERYTHING at all times.

Over the Thanksgiving Holidays, there was a brief opportunity to take a breath and reflect. I realized: **Without intentionality on how to approach web3 and a career in this space, it’s too easy to drown in the FOMO-laced web3 crypto sea.**

Pretend it’s the 90s or early 2000s. Can you imagine saying “I’m going to go work at an internet company!” and then being expected to know absolutely everything that happens on the internet at any given time? Even at that time, it would have been impossible.

I offer the same paradigm for today: **it isn’t possible to know everything happening in crypto, or even web3. If anything else, the breadth and depth and synergies throughout are evidence of our space’s growth and promise.** That’s exciting, but you may be just one person, like me, with 24 hours in a day. And so, it’s imperative to focus, which leads to iterative growth, driving results, and overall wellbeing and learning.

**So what does one focus on and commit to?**

Below are my 10 commitments to help me focus on what matters to me. I share all of these details in the hopes that they resonate with you. I also wrote these with the intention of revisiting them regularly to hold myself accountable.

Here we go:

### 1. Remember why you joined the world of web 3

I came into web3 for three reasons:

* (a) I wanted to learn a lot, really, really fast (lol)
* (b) I felt it was the best place to build what I believe (see commitment 3 below) and
* (c) For the first time in crypto’s relatively short history, the promise of crypto has evolved from “just” financial applications into rich consumer experiences that are not only fun, but can evolve to change broken paradigms in the world.

Consumer is my area of expertise: I built and created global campaigns for experiences in augmented reality and gaming as a leader at Niantic and on the Pokémon GO team. Something inside insisted to me that I had a unique perspective, worthy of offering to the new world that we’re building here in web3.

We are on the cutting edge, linking arms together into the dark forest, looking for the guiding lights, all while building a new world. When things get overwhelming, remember that the people here in web3 are smart, vibrant, and worth continuously learning from. And hopefully, I will always have something to teach as well.

### 2. Enjoy what you commit to, and commit to what you enjoy, because success comes from committing to the process that you do all the way

I admire the people who came into crypto early or invested early, who saw its potential before the rest of the world did. I was literally told about Bitcoin by Brian Armstrong about a decade ago over burritos and drinks, and I definitely didn’t see the promise at the time before it blew up in many ways. But in spite of the retroactive FOMO, I think now is the moment when I was personally meant to come into crypto, no earlier.

To oversimplify as to why: In the early days of crypto, it was about building a financial ecosystem from the absolute ground up. From the outside looking in, I cheered on what I saw but couldn’t see myself enjoying that kind of work hands-on.

I’ve always cared about enjoying the things I do in my career so that I can give them my 1000%. That’s why I was lucky to work on enjoyable consumer projects as a strategy consultant early in my career. After that, working in augmented reality and gaming felt easeful and enjoyable for me. I had no greater thrill than to partner with product, engineering, and community leaders whom I trusted to build great things and whose stories I helped tell

The Rules of the Game

## Hi, I’m Veronica. Let’s play a game.

It’s going to be a long one, but you can handle it.

(Let’s be real: you’re going to play this game whether you want to or not. Don’t sleep on the game. We’re already here.)

**The game starts when you are born, and it ends when you die.**

**Does that sound like a lot of pressure?**

It’s okay, because some people play this game consciously, and some people play it unconsciously. It can consume you to whatever level you want.

[edition://0xDF5b5ee15CC96ba7d0CB6BD9b2c0fc4417ab6445?editionId=264](edition://0xDF5b5ee15CC96ba7d0CB6BD9b2c0fc4417ab6445?editionId=264)

Here are the three rules of The Game:

1. Money can be exchanged for **goods and services**
2. Money can be used as a **store of value**
3. Money is used as a **method of account**

When I was repeatedly given these rules, at the start of every math and economics class in college, I didn’t realize that these were rules to a game. But make no mistake: these are the rules to ***THE*** ***GAME*** all around us.

You probably know people who get depressed playing this game because they **lose at it too much**. But funnily enough, you probably *also* know people who get depressed playing this game because they **win at it too much**.

### So what is money?

### Well… it’s kind of up to you. And everyone else.

And we mean EVERYONE else.

The government may have something to say on what money is. So do your friends, family, celebrities, and internet communities. For a long time, money currencies were fancy objects, like [seashells and rocks](http://www.indians.org/articles/native-american-money.html), and then currencies became special designed precious metals in the form of [gold or silver coins](http://ancient-roman-coins.com/). [Money became paper](https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/gold-convertibility-ends). Money became mental bank tallies on a computer screen. [Money became a decentralized ledger](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf). Money morphed from boring to stressful to fun and back again. [Money morphed back into rocks again.](https://www.etherrock.com/)

But no matter what, money can be exchanged, used as a store of value, used as a method of account. The rules are the same.

Money can be exchanged for the basics of life. In The Game, you might use money to buy cheap food, or expensive food; a nice house or a REALLY beautiful big home. You might use contracts in this game to get money that isn’t yours (at first) to fund a beautiful big home. You just have to pay that money back one day; the contract terms you get are part of The Game.

You might join a community that raises money to tell a powerful story or deliver a service in a special way. You might use money to fuel a cause you believe in and to make the world a better place, whatever that means to you or others. You might use money to pay off bills, but you might also use money to flex: put on a show, plan parties, buy a diamond, buy jpegs, [create jpegs of diamonds](https://twitter.com/RealNatashaChe/status/1432780251713601538?s=20).

### On that note: how do you win or lose this game?

Also: **kind of up to you and everyone else**. In fact, whatever it takes to win or lose this game has that much more to do with the government, your friends, family, celebrities, and internet communities. Your choice of money may lose or gain store of value. It changes. You may not ever win. You may not ever lose.

But at the end of the day, you play this game because of why we play any game.

If a game is all around us, then you first play to survive. And once you are successfully surviving, you play a game to feel any number of the following feels:

1. **Lucky - We love gambling.**
2. **Powerful - We love winning.**
3. **Smart - We love strategizing.**
4. **Connected - We love socializing.**

And what do I have do say about these for ***you***?

Having led marketing efforts for Pokémon GO, one of the most played augmented reality games in the world, I come from the world o